Thompson Twins - Quick Step & Side Kick - 1983

 

Mother in law in town...  Barely have a moment to even type this. Have a great night!

Quick Step & Side Kick - D1   Quick Step & Side Kick - D2

Thompson Twins - Live In Dallas - 1987

 

Tonight's first show is by the illustrious Twins.  By this time, they were in their unavoidable slide down in popularity.  That's not really a bad thing, though.  By this time, if you went to see their show, you saw ALL of their great hits in one setting.  Yes, seeing them during their Gap Tour or Future Days Tour would've been spectacular, but this was seeing the best of all of it at once.

Soundboard recording sounds great.  I obviously used the cover to their Close To The Bone album.  Looking at it now, I'm not a fan of the colors I chose, though.  Doesn't matter, the show is wonderful and that's what counts.

Thompson Twins - Live In Dallas - 1987

 

Thompson Twins - Close To the Bone - 1987

So, the mature and mellow sounding Thompson Twins.  How incredibly dull.  But, I wouldn't be posting it if I didn't feel that it had some value. 

I was at my cousin's house in a little poe-dunk city in a Great Plains state when we were listening to a local radio program.  They were playing one of those pre-recorded interviews with the band on this album,  and telling us how great it was.  The local DJ got on there, and said that the next ten people would get autographed copies of the record for free.  SO, we jumped on their phone and got in.  Number seven!  She won a free autographed copy of the album!!!!  The next day we go down to pick it up at the station, and they had her the album with some signatures on it.  Cool.  We look closer, and the "autographs" on the record were those of the top local DJs for that station. 

W...T....Fuck!

Class acts, they are.  I will always enjoy some TT whether it be from their very first albums, blockbuster albums or their later ones, well into the Babble years.  The later solo material in the 00s and beyond, meh.  It's not the same.

What surprised me the most on this album was the utter lack of singles and mixes.  The previous albums had 4-5 singles and a huge slew of mixes that could fill discs and discs.  I could barely find enough material to fill one disc, for this one.  Sad, too bad.

Obviously not one of their best, but an essential part of every balanced TT collection.  Gotta have it.

Thompson Twins - Close To the Bone - 1987

Thompson Twins - Here's To Future Days - 1985

My favorite, and probably the best of the Thompson Twins albums, Here's To Future Days came out in 1985.  This was the last of the great New Romantic albums.  As we shifted into the late 80s, the sound began to change as we saw Rap, Hair Metal, Synth-Pop/Rock, Post Punk and proto-House began to dominate the music scene.  The Twins reached the peak of their popularity with this album, and then it was a slow slide downhill after.

I think my favorite video from this album was the Revolution video.  From what I can remember, it was a pseudo-live performance, and was shot from the floor up.  They were bouncing all over the stage windmilling their guitars and screaming out the song and they were bigger than life.  Yeah, it was a good video.  Trying to find any of the official videos from this album is near impossible.  I haven't seen the Revolution video for 25 or 30 years.  It would be great to see it again.

As with Into the Gap and Out of the Gap, This album had a ton of mixes.  Again, more than I could count.  I know I didn't get all of them, as there were some that seemed redundant and I didn't have enough to fill an entire additional disc.  As it is, there are two solid discs of great mixes and versions.  They also had a bunch of good single sleeves, as well.  I was lucky to find such a great scan of a magazine article that had the trio and logo in front of a yellow screen.  It's a perfect cover.

Now, I liked Close To the Bone, but that album signaled their inevitable slide into obscurity.  So sad.  By the time Big Trash and Queer came out, they were irrelevant and had to re-invent themselves into Babble.  When I hear the name Thompson Twins, though, this is the album that instantly comes to mind.

Enjoy the mixes.

Thompson Twins - Here's To More Future Days - 1985

Thompson Twins - Here's To Future Days - The Remixes - 1985

Thompson Twins - Into the Gap/Out of the Gap - 1984

Let me tell you this.  I still don't have them all.  In fact, I don't even know which ones I'm missing.  Beyond that, I can't tell what I've got and what I don't have and how to differentiate between them all.

When TT released this album, they obviously did it in a variety of formats for the time.  They had vinyl, cassette and CD.  Each different format had different mixes and different track listings.  The "b-sides" if you can call them that, were actually just remixes of album tracks and singles.  So you had remixes of tracks, b-sides that were pretty much remixes, and remixes then on top of those b-sides.  Then they started playing the tracks backwards and releasing those.  Then, you had fade outs and cold stops and edits and remix edits and edit remixes and dubs and cuts and...  I give up.

If someone can give me a hard core run down, in detail and 100% complete of every track from Into the Gap, I would be indebted to you.  It's all a mess.

I pulled off two discs of my favorite mixes and called it good.  I still have another two or three discs of mixes left, but people can only listen to so much Doctor Doctor! before they have to go see one.

Cool b-side picture sleeves.  Very 80s New Romantic Pop.  Very radio friendly.  Awesome videos and the mixes are really good.

Hope you like this.  If you do, I'll put out Here's to Future Days shortly...

Into the Gap - Disc One

Out of the Gap - Disc Two